old herring nets are not expensive—but many an experienced 
gardener will tell you, not only that the thrush does far more 
good than harm in the long run, but that he prefers to let the bird 
have its share of grubs and fruit rather than net the fruit and the 
snails in together. 
Since the thrush family have soft bills for dealing with grub 
food, is it fair to condemn them because those same bills are also 
well adapted for dealing with soft fruit ? 
Then take the case of the chaffinch, as a representative of many 
of the finches and similar birds. The chaffinch lives chiefly, in its 
adult life, on seeds, and throughout the year is searching in¬ 
dustriously for those of a thousand and one weeds that choke the 
growth of farm and garden crops—charlock, plantains, groundsel, 
knotgrass, and other hardy pests of farmer and gardener; searching 
for them both at the time they ripen and afterwards in the stubble 
and the stackyard. It also devours, and feeds its young entirely, 
on insects of various kinds, including leaf-roller and looper cater¬ 
pillars, and the dreaded “surface” caterpillar (the grub of the 
diamond-backed moth), a service to man, it performs in common 
•with the starling, sparrow, and linnet. 
As a set-off to this good work the chaffinch will thin out young 
turnips as thoroughly as the farmer himself would do it a little 
later on, and will take toll of newly-sown cabbage, radish, and 
various garden seeds if these are not planted deep enough to 
escape his quick eye, and are not protected. The same taste and 
the same bill which exercise themselves so usefully on the weeds 
are turned for a limited time and under certain conditions to the 
crops. But what are the proportions of work and damage? 
Everyone has some vague idea of the rapid growth and the 
stubborn vitality of those wiry indigenous plants which go by the 
name of weeds, and the ease with which they choke and overpower 
the cultivated alien. 
Knotgrass, with its host of tiny seeds, thistle and groundsel with 
their innumerable winged children, indomitable plantains and 
shepherd’s-purse and charlock, are ready to overrun the world at 
the shortest notice. 
One small spike of plantain yields two or three thousand 
seeds, at a low estimate, and this means nine or ten thousand 
potential successors of one single plant. All would not find 
hospitable soil, but it is certain that if the bird of the air did not 
consume a large proportion, they would present an appalling 
problem to the tiller of field and garden. The quantity eaten by 
birds such as chaffinch, greenfinch, linnet, red-poll, lark and 
yellow-hammer and other buntings, is incalculable. A caged bull- 
